Aieieeee! How well I remember this. I spent *way* too many hours writing
interface code to talk to old IBM devices and software from Data General
minicomputers back in the early 80s. Can't fault IBM's documentation
tho', it was accurate and with it you could get the job done.
---
Scott Gomez
-----Original Message-----
From: Moose [mailto:olymoose@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Subject: [OM] Re: OT Computer trivia, was Polaroid Sprintscan 4000
question
Early IBM engineering was very smart in at least one area. They fully
and strictly defined the interfaces between pieces of hardware and
software. Old software that expected to output to a card punch could
later output to several different storage devices seamlessly without any
modification. I once looked at a very sophisticated mapping system from
IBM for my employer. They had recently started using their new mainframe
relational database system rather than the old one originally used to
support the mapping system. No change to the mapping system was
required! The interface ws defined to the database system and off they
went.
Moose
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